The Gleick effect – proving there is no bad publicity

In a December 28 post, blogger Greg Laden, a self-described “biological anthropologist and science communicator,” ranked The Heartland Institute’sefforts to expose global warming alarmism as one of the “top climate stories of 2012”. I suppose we should be flattered, but his error-filled explanation for including us in the list requires some corrections:

Heartland isn’t a “climate denial ‘think’ tank.” Last time I checked, no Heartland spokesperson ever denied the existence of the climate, or even climate change.

Heartland didn’t “implode” or “suffer major damage” in 2012. In fact, we increased receipts by about 15% from 2011, increased the number of donors nearly four-fold, more than doubled the number of policy advisors (to 237), and set records for press attention and online traffic for our sites. 2012 was a breakthrough year for us, thanks in no small part to the attention generated by our work on global warming/cooling.

We have never tried to “prove that cigarette smoking was not bad for you.” We do argue that taxes on smokers are too high and second-hand smoke is not the public health threat that anti-smoking zealots claim.

We were not “caught red handed trying to fund an effort explicitly (but secretly) designed to damage science education in public schools.” That description is based on a fake memo circulated by disgraced water scientist Peter Gleick. We announced the curriculum project in our members newsletter and explained there that our intent is to help de-politicize the issue. How is that a bad thing?

We did run a billboard about global warming, but it did not “equat[e] people who thought the climate science on global warming is based on facts and is not a fraud with well-known serial killers.” The billboard simply pointed out that Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, still believes in global warming, and asked viewers if they do, too. We know why lefties went nuts over it – Kaczynski, after all, is one of their own – but it wasn’t inaccurate or offensive.

We lost a few corporate donors who couldn’t stand the heat when liberal advocacy groups, using a donor list stolen by the aforementioned Peter Gleick, circulated online petitions demanding that they stop funding us. But as already mentioned, we gained many more donors than we lost and had an exceptionally good fundraising year.

Laden ends by saying The Heartland Institute, “which never was really that big, is now no longer a factor in the climate change.” He’s right that we aren’t very big – about $6 million a year – but he’s wrong about the role we continue to play in the international debate. Our Eighth International Conference on Climate Change, held in Munich on November 31-December 1, 2012, was a huge success. We’ve got projects on climate already lined up for 2013 that make 2012 look like a dress rehearsal.

In short, Heartland played a major role in shaping the debate over global warming in 2012, and we expect to play an even larger role in 2013. Sometimes it takes a little controversy to break through media bias and public indifference. Heartland achieved this in 2012.

Joe Bast is the president of the Heartland Institute

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Note to get a window into the strange and hateful mind of Greg Laden, all you need to do is read his about page here and scroll down. Pity the soul that lives in Texas or West Virginia.

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185 thoughts on “The Gleick effect – proving there is no bad publicity”

Joe,
I found great value in down loading the mp3s and power points of the presentations at the conferences. I’ve done this since NY May 2009. You could say I’m a fan! Thanks heaps for all you and Heartland do.
All the very best wishes for 2013.
Robin (New Zealand)

“Disgraced” Peter Gleick is still the president of the Pacific Institute (after a short leave of absence). He is still member of the National Academy of Science and was fairly active at the last AGU meeting in San Francisco. The disastrous billboard ad pretty much turned the table and vindicated Peter Gleick.

Stop being a Gleick apologist and read the article. There is no comparison between the odious, slimy Peter Gleick and the upstanding Heartland Institute, which fights the true evil of the climate alarmist movement on a shoestring budget — to which I gladly contribute. You would, too, if you cared about the country.

My goodness, for someone who gets bent out of shape when someone posts a racist remark on his blog, Harvard-PhD Laden displays his own form of prejudice towards the “slack jawed yokels” in Texas and Virginia. I’ve known a computer scientist and a philosopher from Texas, and an economist and a lawyer from Virginia, to name just a few of the charming and intelligent occupants of both states. It would appear that Dr. Laden is ignorant, arrogant, and bigoted.

You know, I dont mean to be critical of Watts Up, but don’t you think just being on the same page as Heartland is sort of slimy? I mean, these guys are simply in it for business profitability at the expense of human lives and the environment. They are not a kitten saving organization, not even close.

Do you think being on the same page as Gleick is sort of slimy? Heartland hasn’t done anything illegal, as far as we know. Gleick has. And yes, you DO mean to be critical of WUWT, that’s all you do.

FYI, there was no “Bin Laden” poster campaign. You need to think before you type. Maybe you were thinking of Greg Bin Laden?

“. We know why lefties went nuts over it – Kaczynski, after all, is one of their own – but it wasn’t inaccurate or offensive.”

I’m on your side, and you can argue about whether it was offensive..but it was a colossal misjudgment in my opinion. At the moment in time things were going your way courtesy of the boneheaded Mr. Gleick, and that billboard changed the conversation, suddenly putting you guys on the offensive. I’d respect you more if you just admitted it was a mistake.

Greg (bin) Laden says “I am a blogger and writer and independent scholar who occasionally teaches”. I’d suggest he appears before students on more occasions than he actually teaches. Perhaps I’m being a bit hard on him, but then he says “Sometimes I’m hard on an entire state. Like Texas. Or, recently, West Virginia” so I’ll let my suggestion stand.

I’m not being a bit hard on him by calling him a “toxic little blogger” (remove/add letters in the last word to make it more appropriate) when he says “Or we could ignore you and wait for some major natural disaster to mostly wipe you out, like happened in Louisiana”.
What a piece of canine excrement he is.

Wiki says: “The advertising campaign led to the loss of substantial corporate funding, the resignation of Institute board members, and the resignation of almost the entire Heartland Washington D.C. office, taking the Institute’s biggest project (on insurance) with it.”

Which is what Laden said.

I don’t have time to check – What is Laden’s source? Wikipedia?

BTW, your conflation of smoking and second hand smoke implies I was a smoker. I generally view smokers as people who buy tobacco and set the stuff on fire. Please clarify what I was. (These days there are so few smokers on the loose I get next to no second hand smoke.)

Joe Bast says: “We have never tried to “prove that cigarette smoking was not bad for you.”

Wiki says: “In the 1990s, the Heartland Institute worked with Philip Morris to question the link between secondhand smoke and health risks. Philip Morris used Heartland to distribute tobacco-industry material, and arranged for the Heartland Institute to publish “policy studies” which summarized Philip Morris reports.”

Where’s the contradiction? Joe Bast denied that Heartland questioned the dangers of first-hand smoke, so your quoting a statement that it questioned the dangers of second-hand smoke is irrelevant.

We did run a billboard about global warming, but it did not “equat[e] people who thought the climate science on global warming is based on facts and is not a fraud with well-known serial killers.” The billboard simply pointed out that Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, still believes in global warming, and asked viewers if they do, too. We know why lefties went nuts over it – Kaczynski, after all, is one of their own – but it wasn’t inaccurate or offensive.

It would have been funny as a WUWT comment, or maybe as a Marc Morano comment, but it was a loser because it cost you the “high road” position in the debate in the eyes of others, no matter how defensible it looks to you. It was a sharp tactical zinger, but a strategic blunder. Wise men know when to hold their tongues–when they are most tempted to say something clever.

Joe Bast;
I want to chime in with pokerguy. The Unabomber billboard was a mistake. Stop defending it, that only weakens your position. If you are going to spend time on the issue, then may I suggest a crowd sourcing effort to as to what should be on your next foray into billboard politics. The great part of crowd sourcing these things is that you have a huge audience who will point you at all the ways your great ideas can be twisted into something unexpected. Forewarned is forearmed as they say.

So Laden is a self styled “Science Communicator”, hows that working out for him?
The team and their apologists, keep saying, we are not lying its just a failure to communicate the science. Yet public engagement with panic about the weather keeps right on slipping, Canada has ditched Kyoto and no-body up here has done more than cheer.
And the stammering from the cheap seats, over the collapse of any correlation between rising co2 emissions and rising global temperature, is priceless.
Now these clowns are reduced to whining about weather, its our fault if any storm happens????
Oh yeah, what was the “context” missing in the CRU emails? I’m still waiting.
Happy New year to Heartland and all honest folk. To the true believers, well you made your bed. Enjoy.

A convenient source, with (often) on deeply technical scientific issues, a credible source and a credible reference for formulas and constants that are universally constant.

they are terrible on “wider-range” issues of global warming in particular – and the environment in general – but convenient, if I trust the accuracy of what they are saying because of my prior knowledge.

For example, I’d trust Wiki with a formula for the heat transfer of energy through ice and the heat transfer coefficient of ice, but NOT the paragraphs before and after it discussing Greenland ice melt.
I’d trust it with the emissivity of forested land, but NOT the paragraphs discussing land use and albedo.
I trust it for the “average speed” of a glacier, but NOT the melting of glacier ice worldwide.

“You know, I dont mean to be critical of Watts Up, but don’t you think just being on the same page as Heartland is sort of slimy?”

Thanks… for a big ROFL….. if you’re going to “concern-troll” here at least skip the fatuous “I don’t mean to be critical….” C’mon that’s just too insulting to all here. I haven’t had any personal contact with Heartland but they seem like paragons compared to a lot of people on The ClimateScience-TM Team.

As long as you are sooooooooo concerned, why don’t you work on getting climate science to distance real science from “slimy” propagandists Mann, Gleick, Hansen, Briffa, Phil Jones, Karoly and Gergis, Lewandowsky, Algore, et al.

Speaking of wiki[pedia], I think this should be in the article on agitprop:

You know, I dont mean to be critical of Watts Up, but don’t you think just being on the same page as Heartland is sort of slimy? I mean, these guys are simply in it for business profitability at the expense of human lives and the environment.

Hmmm… Google found links to sites for a Greg Laden, including a blog that has the tag line “Science as Culture, Culture as Science”. Doesn’t seem to be in the top 10 sites on the net, or top 100. Alexa says scienceblogs.com (hosting site for scienceblogs.com/gregladen) has site rank of 15,972, and there’s a gregladen.com with rank somewhere down the list below 1,000,000.

Also found a Greg Laden who’s a blogger (independent and for Nat Geo) and also a “Travel and Research Coordinator with Bushrock”, and an assistant professor at U Minnesota.

Is this the same Greg Laden? If it is, I’m glad that he and trafamadore reminded me that I still have time to make a tax-deductible contribution to Heartland for 2012.

“How many people died because of delayed action due to Heartland’s ad campaign on second hand smoke?”

I haven’t been following the research in the last few years, but, before that, every new study seemed to show that the threat of ‘second hand smoke’ was more and more overblown. Has that changed since?

Ah, “trafamadore” the concern troll is back. Trafamadore could not care less about anyone dying from second-hand smoke. In fact, he cannot name one such person. And he is so ignorant that he cannot even spell names correctly [“Tilsdale, Monchton”].

“trafamadore” asks: “Do you have a problem with the published literature?”

Aside from the proven fact that “Pal Review” controls most journals, the concern troll should note the fact that Anthony Watts is a published, peer reviewed author, as are many WUWT commentators. But trafamadore is a troll who only believes his cherry-picked pal reviewed sources, and ignores the fact that the planet is falsifying his climate cult beliefs, like the completely non-existent catastrophic AGW.

Heads-up to trafamadore: Peter Gleick is a dishonest, conniving weasel, while Heartland is a stand-up organization that fights the dishonesty that “trafamadore” admires.

You and your good fellows at Heartland may not always be right. No human is. However you are not willfully wrong, like some I could mention. I am thankful you exist.

If you stand for the truth then Truth stands by you. Many seem to have an odd fear of Truth, as if it is a foe. It is not. Truth is our friend. Over and over for over a half century I have seen it is not Truth that gets me, my friends, and mankind into trouble, but rather slyness, trickery, and dishonesty.

trafamadore, I still remember the very first peer reviewed paper I ever read. It explained, through extensive analysis of the physics, that there was a barrier to building single platter 5.25 inch hard disk drives that could store more than 5 megabytes. The paper investigated possible techniques for circumventing this barrier than might allow that limit to be exceeded, but that they in turn had limits of their own and exceeding 10 megabytes was clearly impossible. A broad range of physicists at the time scoffed at the paper, suggesting that even approaching 5 megabytes was ridiculous.

Please keep this in mind when you next visit your favourite electronics store as those 3.5 inch, 4 terabyte hard drives they are trying to sell you obviously do not exist. Thank GOODNESS you were forewarned by the peer review literature.

Greg Laden:
“Sometimes I’m hard on an entire state. Like Texas. Or, recently, West Virginia.”
“It’s funny when the slack jawed yokels who live in these god-forsaken shitholes get annoyed at that”
“…..wait for some major natural disaster to mostly wipe you out, like happened in Louisiana.”
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He has gone beyond Parncutt.

In 1998 and 2003 came the results of by far the biggest studies of passive smoking ever carried out.
One was conducted by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organisation.http://www.data-yard.net/2/12/1440.pdf
The other, run by Prof James Enstrom and Geoffrey Kabat for the American Cancer Society, was a mammoth 40-year-long study of 35,000 non-smokers living with smokers.

In each case, when the sponsors saw the results they were horrified. The evidence inescapably showed that passive smoking posed no significant risk.
This confirmed Sir Richard Doll’s own comment in 2001: “The effects of other people’s smoking in my presence is so small it doesn’t worry me’.
‘In each case, the sponsors tried to suppress the results, which were only with difficulty made public (the fact that Enstrom and Kabat, both non-smokers, could only get their results published with help from the tobacco industry was inevitably used to discredit them, even though all their research had been financed by the anti-tobacco cancer charity).’

Joe.
Keep focused on the truth, in spite of all the money the CAGW crowd are losing ground for the hearts and minds of normal people who are getting sick and tired of their lies, doom and gloom predictions.

“■We have never tried to “prove that cigarette smoking was not bad for you.” We do argue that taxes on smokers are too high and second-hand smoke is not the public health threat that anti-smoking zealots claim”

A silly crazy stance to take by Heartland if you ask me…an opening for criticism if ever ther was one!
Who thought that foolishness up!

Source International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France. boffetta@iarc.fr
Abstract
BACKGROUND: An association between exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) and lung cancer risk has been suggested. To evaluate this possible association better, researchers need more precise estimates of risk, the relative contribution of different sources of ETS, and the effect of ETS exposure on different histologic types of lung cancer. To address these issues, we have conducted a case-control study of lung cancer and exposure to ETS in 12 centers from seven European countries.

METHODS: A total of 650 patients with lung cancer and 1542 control subjects up to 74 years of age were interviewed about exposure to ETS. Neither case subjects nor control subjects had smoked more than 400 cigarettes in their lifetime.
RESULTS: ETS exposure during childhood was not associated with an increased risk of lung cancer (odds ratio [OR] for ever exposure = 0.78; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.64-0.96)…..

The strongest and the only statistically significant result of this study appears to be that exposing children to secondhand tobacco smoke helps protect them from lung cancer later in life. Has there been another study that directly contradicts this result?

You forgot to mention, too, davidmhoffer, that such 4-terabyte hard drives can be purchased from multiple, highly reliable companies in the $300 to $400 range–so an impossible platform at an astonishingly low price to boot (no pun intended)!

Pokerguy, Roger Knights, davidmhoffer — I’m confident Joe Bast has heard your point of view expressed by several others besides yourselves. I’m also confident that he has heard expression of the opinion that the Ted Kaczynski poster was well done! Your argument against the billboard is not persuasive in the least to me. I say, well done!

The Mayo Clinic lists tobacco smoking as a MAJOR RISK FACTOR for lung cancer with strong association. No link of causation has been found. Another MAJOR RISK FACTOR is radon gas from living in houses. No campaign of house demolition or enforced homelessness has been put in place. There are also hundreds of other risk factors. I think the whole issue is off topic here but that is up to Anthony.

The big Kock/ big oil/ fossil funding talk is equally tiresome. Any Feminist can tell you that all men are heavily funded by the big fossil patriarchy so that they can subjugate and enslave women. I get several million per month myself. Big deal.
sarc/off

I really enjoy it when a troll like Trafamadore comes on WUWT…it’s like dropping a grain of sand into a super saturated solution and watching the crystals forming in array around the seed.
Must be pretty depressing for T though, hope he/she/it is being well paid for their efforts.

People who keep insisting things like “The disastrous billboard ad…” HUH? “…pretty much turned the table and vindicated Peter Gleick” – neither explain how the later happened nor why the former was disastrous.

The solution is utterly simple: “If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen” of public policy debates!

In which case you either lack the intellectual honesty to be on these pages opining, or else the moral courage to stand up for conveying honest information to your opponents. And you are not a practicing, scientific skeptic – just a poser who pretends to be something else.

You do realize that Gleick is still by his own admission responsible for serious criminal acts and it goes without saying, an idiot and possibly a leader in his class of idiots. Greg Laden is a nobody who has wasted his 15 minutes of fame on a serial lie. He will never recover what ever integrity he may have possessed. The deniers of “The World Climate is OK” meme have fired their last best shot and it was a squib. They are being nutted by no less than the IPCC who is admitting pretty much everything they’ve said to date is rubbish.

In normally peaceful Australia we are seeing a surge in violent street crime, with innocent bystanders getting shot, glassed, king hit, killed. In many cases a group of a half dozen or so people suddely attacks a person for no discoverable reason and does great harm.
The Heartland Unabomber episode comes to mind when I hear of yet another senseless attack. My fairly simple reaction is that such people need to be publicised so that law makers and keepers do more to identify in advance, to capture and to punish such people.
I see no damage done by emphasis by billboard that evil people are evil and should be weeded out.
Political correctness has softened too far and there is ground to be recovered.

Balazs, that’s pretty funny! While the billboard ad was a bit over the top taste-wise, nothing, and I mean NOTHING will vindicate Peter Gleick, who let his emotions and his twisted sense of world-saving duty send him into a fit of misrepresentation and outright fabrication to shove his agenda. If he was “vindicated” in your mind, then clearly you think he did something that required vindication. One small problem….his cornball ‘science’ failed him.

Miranda:
O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
That has such people in’t!

Prospero:
‘Tis new to thee.

…

Caliban:
Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked,
I cried to dream again.

Why promote the obviously attention seeking Laden and give his blog link? The best thing to do with self promoting pompous ill-informed ignoramuses is to give them a wide berth. As for the Kaczynski billboard promotion – I too think this was not the best advised plan, it would obviously offend many people regardless of the actual message that was being made. Keep plugging away with the truth and proper science and the message will get there – eventually. There is no need for side-shows.

Really? There are people here who still think Heartland was wrong about the unabomber campaign? Death threats, advocacy to killing skeptics, re-education camps……. sure, in the PR world it didn’t play as well as people would have wanted, but the fact is there isn’t much difference between alarmists and Kaczynski . …… forced sterilizations in India to combat global warming….. for God’s sake!!!! they’ve burned houses down with people in it!!! They’ve forcibly removed people from their lands and killed the ones that didn’t go.

Thousands die every winter in Europe because their insistence for expensive energy and fuels. Their policies have been economically crippling to many places, all of this taking resources away, thwarting our ability to help people. How many more have perished needlessly because resources were withheld or spent on useless ventures like those obscene windmills? Does anyone honestly believe the increased cost of food because of the idiotic ethanol didn’t starve some people?

People, myself included, have been screaming this for years! Does anyone honestly believe these Malthusian monsters don’t knowingly allow this and even encourage this to happen? THIS IS THEIR ADVOCACY!!!

And somehow, in your minds Heartland lost the high ground? What sort of delusional batshit crazy reasoning is that? Heartland can’t lose moral high ground until they advocate and fund force sterilization programs which leave people dead. Heartland can’t lose moral high ground until they advocate and fund forced removal of people from their homes under threat of death. Heartland can’t lose moral high ground until they violate laws, both of governments and laws of decency which separate us from animals, as the alarmists have repeatedly done throughout this entire insane period of history.

I just clicked on the link to Greg Laden’s blog and endured a few minutes of looking at what can only be described as the most rotten, steaming crock of BS I’ve read in a very long time. It is absolutely disgusting tripe!

curly says: December 30, 2012 at 6:30 pm
Also found a Greg Laden who’s a blogger (independent and for Nat Geo) and also a “Travel and Research Coordinator with Bushrock”, and an assistant professor at U Minnesota.
Is this the same Greg Laden? If it is, I’m glad that he and trafamadore reminded me that I still have time to make a tax-deductible contribution to Heartland for 2012.

Clowns like Gleick are desperately wishing those that have not been converted to their cAGW religion will disappear soon. The thermometer refuses to register a climb in global temps, despite a limitless supply of models saying it should, and they know that time is running out. The truth will always out and, one day, the world will re-discover the real science that led mankind out of the dark ages.
Happy New Year to you all.

Although I have to say I can understand an outsider wanting to destroy something, more than I can understand an insider wanting to destroy themselves. That, to me, is pretty barmy, as for as barmy goes.

James Sexton says:
December 31, 2012 at 12:36 am
Really? There are people here who still think Heartland was wrong about the unabomber campaign?
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Yes.
How many people who were alarmists did it convert to sceptics?
How many uncommitted citizens did it convince to become sceptics?
I’d suggest zero, not a single one.

How many of the uncommitted ended up thinking (rightly or wrongly) that this was a cheap, irrelevant slur on people they didn’t recognize as being anything like the Unabomber?
Considerably more I’d suggest.

People, myself included, have been screaming this for years! Does anyone honestly believe these Malthusian monsters don’t knowingly allow this and even encourage this to happen? THIS IS THEIR ADVOCACY!!!
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YES WE KNOW!!!!!
Look, I can scream in caps too.

We know because we are reading WUWT, Climate Audit, Bishop Hill etc.
Most people aren’t. They only know what the MSM tells them.
They have absolutely no idea how egregious warmist measures are.

Many people seeing the billboards or reading the alarmist spin will now think that the best argument sceptics have against warmists are not scientific, not all the evil effects you listed but the fact that the Unabomber is a warmist.

If the word “counterproductive” didn’t exist it would have to be invented for this campaign.

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James Sexton says:
And somehow, in your minds Heartland lost the high ground?
———————————————————————
It appeared to lose the moral high ground to the large proportion of the population who don’t know any better. That’s the point.
Do you seriously think that a single uncommitted person saw that sign and changed their minds in favour of sceptics?

======================================
James Sexton says:
What sort of delusional batshit crazy reasoning is that? Heartland can’t lose moral high ground until they advocate and fund force sterilization programs which leave people dead. Heartland can’t lose moral high ground until they advocate and fund forced removal of people from their homes under threat of death. Heartland can’t lose moral high ground until they violate laws, both of governments and laws of decency which separate us from animals, as the alarmists have repeatedly done throughout this entire insane period of history.
————————————————————————–
But the majority of the population don’t know that.
Tell them all the bad things that stem from the warmist agenda, don’t patronize them by thinking they are going to be convinced by simple-minded name-calling.

If you are trying to convince people of a position, especially if virtually every other information source is against you, you have to be smart. You have to think about what the recipient thinks and feels about a situation and what THEIR reaction is going to be to any message you send out. Not what will make you feel better.

If all you are doing is venting and getting patted on the back by a handful of people who agree with you anyway while putting off a whole load more who don’t, but might be persuadable, then you have failed miserably.

WUWT is a favourite site for me, and normally I am in favour of what Heartland does, but the advert with the unabomber was offensive to many, contrary to your assertion above. It was the skeptic equivalent of the warmist side deciding it was a good idea to blow up children if they did nt agree with CAGW. I think your position would be better served if you acknowledged it was a mistake and moved on.

Ha!!! Laden thinks he has an offensive, ‘sweary’ blog! Like hell he has! That’s for kids. He should take a leaf out of the now defunct Deveil’s Kitchen blog in the UK. That guy knew how to tear a new one. He would have had Laden for breakfast. And he did in support of us realists. Laden should take a good look at some of the old blogs here: http://www.devilskitchen.me.uk/search?q=heartland and see just what a really good writer of blogs can achieve albeit with a little Anglo-Saxon thrown in (so be warned).

Happy New Year Anthony and all your team – and good to see Willis back!

I use to wonder how Hitler got the Germans to put people in gas chambers. As the arrogance of the left increases I am seeing how he did it. From a historical perspective it is very illuminating. From a personal perspective it is very frightening.

Socialism and fascism is just arrogant people who know it all gaining power. They will lie, cheat and commit fraud to gain power. You can never have a compromise with these guys as a compromise is just a step on their journey towards power and that perfect society.

Only nasty people would attempt to stop Mr Laden building a utopia in Texas and America and the world.

Worldwide, 40% of children, 33% of male non-smokers, and 35% of female non-smokers were exposed to second-hand smoke in 2004. This exposure was estimated to have caused 379 000 deaths from ischaemic heart disease, 165 000 from lower respiratory infections, 36 900 from asthma, and 21 400 from lung cancer. 603 000 deaths were attributable to second-hand smoke in 2004, which was about 1·0% of worldwide mortality. 47% of deaths from second-hand smoke occurred in women, 28% in children, and 26% in men. DALYs lost because of exposure to second-hand smoke amounted to 10·9 million, which was about 0·7% of total worldwide burden of diseases in DALYs in 2004. 61% of DALYs were in children. The largest disease burdens were from lower respiratory infections in children younger than 5 years (5 939 000), ischaemic heart disease in adults (2 836 000), and asthma in adults (1 246 000) and children (651 000).

This Dr. Laden seems to have lost the “bin” that must once have preceded his name, but from his “About” rant, I would guess that the only thing that exceeds his arrogance, is his ignorance of anything outside his own self-determined opinion.

I won’t be engaging him for an “eco-tour” of the country I lived in for 40 years either, I suspect his “knowledge” will be driven more by ideology than science.

Is that the Laden who moderated-out my post on his site simple because I expressed agreement with the Met Office and the IPCC (Draft 2 AR5) who both claim there has been no warming in 16 years? I guess these organisations are no longer politically correct with him.

Did I mention he went to Havard to be Harvard educated beyond his intelligence at Harvard?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
When we (husband and I) want to explain how badly managed a business is we use the term “Harvard Business Schooled” The focus is Short Term bottom lie profit and ONLY Short Term profit. They cut things like routine maintenance or the high priced pastry chef that was the reason the restaurant was famous. The bottom line looks great for a year or two and they move on with high praise to ruin another business. Mean while the next poor schmuck has to scramble trying to keep the business in the black while he catches the results of the first guys mistakes.

We see the same happen in politics all the time.

For example the results of Bill Clinton’s five banking laws, ratifying NAFTA and WTO and bring China into the WTO did not hit until 2008. Just as soon as Bush Jr. set foot in office the MSM was yelling recession. I noticed because the poor guy had been in office for less than a month before the press was on him like the jackals they are. (I dislike Bush BTW but for other reasons) We will not see the effects of Obamacare, the Food Modernization Act or the EPA regs designed to shut down coal powered plants until after Obama has left office. A republican will be in office most likely and the press will immediately blame all the ills on him. Hopefully this time with the internet the blame game will not work but I would not bet on it.

Joe b.,
The only way to really make a quick impact on the debate is to prove that ridiculous belief that 97 percent of scientists believe CAGW is settled science, is false. We need a valid, statistically sound poll. Only you can’t do it. It has to be a neutral source. Maybe one of the polling firms. Is this something you’ve given any thought to? I don’t know how it could be done, but that 97 percent canard is a bottom line defense that comes up every time I get into an argument with an alarmist. This seems an obvious strategy to me, but I never see it being discussed.

I notice you don’t deny being funded by the Koke Brothers, Grover Norquist, Tea Party and Big Fracking.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
So how is all that funding from Shell Oil, BP, Enron, Rockefeller (Standard Oil) working for your side? Did the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia get the grant from Shell they mentioned they were hoping for in the Climategate e-mails?

You do KNOW Ged Davis who featured in a Climategate e-mail was the vice president of global business environment for Shell International. He held positions predominantly in scenario planning, strategy.

…he has been Managing Director of the World Economic Forum, responsible for global research, scenario projects, and the design of the annual Forum meeting at Davos. During the late 1990s, he served as Director of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s Global Scenarios and as Facilitator and Lead Author of the IPCC’s Emission Scenarios. Currently, he is Co-President of the Global Energy Assessment with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA); a Director of Low Carbon Accelerator Limited….http://iac.maxasp2.diamax.com/CMS/Reports/11840/11935.aspx?PrinterFriendly=true

Try slinging the funded by big oil mud around here and we will drown you in a boiling mud pool
….

By the way Joe, the funding of CAGW by big Oil would have made a better bill board.

Sort of like:
Did you know the Climate Research Unit was set-up by….
Did you know Peter Gleick’s company has a Shell VP on board?

“So a single billboard that was up for less than 24 hours is enough for Heartland to lose the high ground??

Your mind was already made up, and you are being an apologist for Peter Glieck, who never held any moral high ground. Gleick is a moral basket case, as are his enablers.”

This has nothing to do with MY mind per se; advertising is about winning fence-sitters. For those that were mere onlookers, incurious and possibly unaware of the climate details in dispute, the Heartland Institute lost any high ground garnered by the Gleick fiasco and then some.

I learned something about second hand smoke from this thread. It isn’t the boogeyman I thought. Just the same, I avoid any place that has it. It makes my clothes stink. I really don’t need the leftist rants to educate me on this subject.

Similarly, I don’t need the leftist rants on CO2 to insulate my home, buy fuel efficient cars, etc. I do not like wasting my hard earned money on unnecessary fuel expenditures. Back during the Arab oil crisis of 1980 or so, my wallet got pinched hard. Those were the days of the coming ice age and I was madly adding insulation to my house, and I even made my own storm windows from second hand glass.

However, I admit that I did freak out at the first ice core results shown in Scientific American mag, to which I subscribed.

So I was a warmest believer up until 2008 when I had to help make a presentation on the subject.

After buying a few books, in found that there was such a thing as natural warming. Fair enough. I read Dr. Weavers book and found that he glossed over natural cycles. I smelled a rat. I read what Dr. Susuki had, and found that he supported DeSmogBlog. After asking honest questions on that blog I got booted. More rats! What the !?! was going on I wondered.

Then I watched a debate on the subject, Dr Lindzen and Dr Gavin Smidt (sp?) , no contest! I was appalled at the lack of science in the warmest presentation. No wonder they no longer debate global warming, as they have only arguements from authority on their side, and I already was disillusioned of the great authority of Dr Suzuki. That hurt as my kids were raised on that guy!

Then I discovered Steve McIntyre, and his work on auditing the hockey sticks. Wow, what a relief to find such amazing competence, and not only that, but an entourage of talented volunteers adding to his blog.

Then came WUWT. What an amazing science site!

Thus, back in 2008 we had to tell our 40 or so lunch club of well off, generally leftish crowd that the science was definitely not settled, and indeed, some of our hollowed science sources, such as Dr Weaver and Dr Suzuki, were vacuous.

I personally think Willis has nailed it, ie, the earths natural thermostat is the key, and the actual CO2 warming may end up not even being measurable. I do not dispute the 1C or so warming, but that number is a laboratory number. In the real world, the earth has huge natural feed backs, such as the thunderstorms around the equator that Willis documented. No way, no how, is 1 C going to happen. Maybe 0.3 C, but how can you even measure that?

So what is the point of my post? I think the warmists long since lost the scientific arguements, and all we have from them is personal attacks, such as this blog thread illuminates.

“Die Zauberflotist says:
December 30, 2012 at 6:17 pm
I notice you don’t deny being funded by the Koke Brothers, Grover Norquist, Tea Party and Big Fracking.”
—
Who are the Koke brothers?
The Tea Party is for the most part an informal association of like minded people. They don’t have much of a budget to begin with.
Who’s this “Big Frakking” that has you so scared?

Peter Gleick – he just needs the right venue for the advertisement. If he were made the poster child for LifeLock.
It could go something like this; “The crooks are becoming more sophisticated. Sporting PhD’s, political connections, and a deep abiding hatred of your freedoms. Can you afford to leave your personal effects and security at the whim of corrupt political appointees in the Attorney General’s office, who care more for their causes and agendas than in enforcing the law?

…
If all you are doing is venting and getting patted on the back by a handful of people who agree with you anyway while putting off a whole load more who don’t, but might be persuadable, then you have failed miserably.

One of the more effective ways to introduce people to the truth about climate is to invite them to come to WUWT and spend some time/exert some effort. The MSM has been bought out by anti-science interests so that isn’t a source of rational discussion. Their Progressive/UN agenda is illogical as reality demonstrates, but people have to see it explained in black and white to recognize their distortions and lies.

With 36,000,000 people viewing WUWT in 2012, that’s almost 100,000 a day! If even a tenth of these would actively recruit new readers to this Web site, our numbers would swell dramatically. I once issued that challenge and issue it again–Please tell your friends, neighbors, relatives and co-workers about this site. Spell the URL out to them; encourage them to add it to their Favorites; walk them through the various features and resources.

The readership trendline for WUWT is positive, but the slope would increase much faster if we’d all just take on this challenge. Billboards just won’t cut it.

There is a climate activist willingness based in self righteous certitude that accepts and promotes violating eithical and legal standards. You see it in Climategate, James Hansen and acitivist music professors – multiple people calling for everything from reporting only one side and embarking on public indoctrination campaigns to civil disobedience, to intentional theft and defamation ala Gleick to more extreme activist actions and calls to execute deniers. So as for running a single billboard of the Unabomber that reminds everyone that such a continuum of activist behavior exists, well excuuuuuuuse Heartland

It would seem Greg Laden is just another run of the mill narcissist. He fits the description perfectly. Also, I’ve read where over-generalization is the sign of a weak mind. Another apt description for someone who tries to group all the people in one state together.

I use to wonder how Hitler got the Germans to put people in gas chambers. As the arrogance of the left increases I am seeing how he did it. From a historical perspective it is very illuminating. From a personal perspective it is very frightening.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Very frightening since our politicians all seem to be on the same bandwagon that is headed towards a world totalitarian state.

The Director General of the World Trade Organization, Pascal Lamy, is openly calling for ‘Global Governance’ and the destruction of national sovereignty yet you do not hear a peep from the MSM or our political ‘leaders’

Where the heck is the outrage? Where the heck is the call for Lamy’s removal? Where the heck is the call for leaving the WTO?

Here is where global warming and the carefully orchestrated economic crisis is used by Lamy as an excuse for calling for Global Governance. Remember Bill Clinton’s five new banking laws, WTO ratification and China championing caused the US economic crisis. Now Clinton is a speaker at LSE along with Lamy and Tony Blair. All three advocating LSE’s “Third Way”

Lamy sees need for “right global governance” to meet global challenges
We are in the midst of the worst ever economic crisis and the first to have a global reach. A crisis which has seen a decimation of employment. We are seeing our planet deteriorate due to global warming. With severe droughts and violent floods. With entire islands disappearing under water. With nuclear proliferation which poses a serious threat to world peace and security.

How dare the son of a syphilitic camel point out the decimation of employment when the WTO was instrumental in causing that problem!

Other Articles by Lamy: (They are short) what does “governance” really mean
What is frightening about this one is he discusses how to get the people to ‘buy-in’ “We have to explore how to ensure that citizens have the feeling that they belong…” Note feeling is another weasel word.

Pascal Lamy: Local governments, global governance
He says “…In fact, the Wesphalian order is a challenge in itself. The recent crisis has demonstrated it brutally…. The main challenge here is that the Westphalian order gives a premium to “naysayers” who can block decisions, thereby impeding results”

The WTO is “a laboratory for harnessing globalization” — Lamy
Lamy makes clear what he means by Westphalian and that he wants it overturned. “… the classical Westphalian order is based on the full sovereignty monopoly of nation states. We must find ways to address the opposition from sovereign nation-states who resist more or less intensely — depending on the state and on the subject matter — transferring or sharing with international institutions their jurisdiction over certain matters.”

Global Governance: Lessons from Europe
He suggest the EU as a model for world governance. , “the European construction is the most ambitious experiment to date in supranational governance. It is the story of a desired, defined and organized interdependence between its member states…. In the longer term, we should have both the G20 and the international agencies reporting to the “parliament” of the United Nations. In this respect, a revamping of the UN Economic and Social Council could lend support to the recent resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly on a UN-system-wide coherence.”

“Global governance requires localising global issues” — Lamy
In this article Lamy is very open in his desire to wipe out national sovereignty. “Europe scores in my view rather highly. Thanks to the primacy of EU law over national law. Thanks to the work of the European Court of Justice in ensuring enforcement and respect for the rule of law. And thanks to a clear articulation between the Commission, the Parliament, and the European Court of Justice….the European integration process shows that supra-national governance can work.”

As I said WHERE THE HECK are our politicians who should be fighting the overthrow of their nations?

This is what Heartland is actually fighting in their role in shaping the debate over global warming. It is the reason those supporting ‘The Cause’ will not debate. They know their science ins nothing but a house of cards. “Global Warming is just the means used to make people ‘feel’ they all belong to a ‘Global Society’ and need ‘Global Governance’ since one nation can not handle such a huge ‘catastrophic’ crisis alone.

I can’t believe people actually claim that nonsense after Peter Gleick committed identity theft and admitted to it……

The comparison to the Pacific Institute and the Heartland is just a no-brainer. One has an admitted felon as their leader, the other put up a billboard? Really?

All warmists have zero credibility with their lack of model accuracy after 15 years of no warming. I am sorry, but in science you can’t be that wrong and still even pretend to hold onto any high ground or moral superiority especially when you have moonbats such as Greg Laden making a name for themselves with insults.

I guess perhaps warmists believe that science is about such things as insults, derision, dehumanizing their opponents and commiting crimes. I cry for the science of my parents and grandparents day back when it was about being correct versus “politically correct.” What nonsense!

Life is nothing but doom&gloom when you are a secular anti-humanist.
When you lack the grace to accept your ignorance.
Lack the humility to say “I don’t Know”.
And fear the human beast of yourself.
But maintain the fiction you alone are the rational adult in every room.
Even an atheist, can admit the logical synergy between, I do not know and its gods will,act of god.
Everything is=God? Man is natural . Ignorance is massive. Knowledge a window into ignorance.
If one desires certainty, science thro the scientific method will not help.
But a theology by which the human species is defined as a cancer of the planet, does not give rise to humility, grace or any thing good.

When dogma is being seen as science, when people believe that they have absolute knowlegde with no test in reality and aspire to the knownledge of gods. Arrogance, ignorance, the push button order and the beliefs that the end justifies the means.

The Mayo Clinic lists tobacco smoking as a MAJOR RISK FACTOR for lung cancer with strong association. No link of causation has been found. Another MAJOR RISK FACTOR is radon gas from living in houses. No campaign of house demolition or enforced homelessness has been put in place….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You have not checked the radon laws in the Peoples Republic of Massachusetts, home of the foremost Marxist Scholars in the world. (Quote from a communist friend)

RockyRoad says:
December 31, 2012 at 6:54 am
One of the more effective ways to introduce people to the truth about climate is to invite them to come to WUWT and spend some time/exert some effort. …. I once issued that challenge and issue it again–Please tell your friends, neighbors, relatives and co-workers about this site. Spell the URL out to them; encourage them to add it to their Favorites; walk them through the various features and resources.

The readership trendline for WUWT is positive, but the slope would increase much faster if we’d all just take on this challenge. Billboards just won’t cut it.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I use an index card with specific articles and URLs listed or better yet the back of one of my business cards. It helps if you write the information out in front of the people.

I have found the banking crisis or food are a good lead in as a ‘hook’ to get people into a discussion.

Henry Kissinger’s statement:“Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.”
Is a real winner for making the connections.

James Sexton says:
December 31, 2012 at 12:36 am
Really? There are people here who still think Heartland was wrong about the unabomber campaign?
—————————————————————
Yes.
How many people who were alarmists did it convert to sceptics?
How many uncommitted citizens did it convince to become sceptics?
I’d suggest zero, not a single one.
…………
They have absolutely no idea how egregious warmist measures are.
========================================================
Would that be because some skeptics are unwilling and have no stomach to call things for what they are?

I’ll say this, unless the world’s populace understand how ruinous these people are, we’ll never be rid of this blight on humanity. Do you think we’ll convince the world by demonstrating alarmists are wrong on their energy calculations of polar albedo? Or, do we win by demonstrating how monstrous and disastrous their advocacy is? Heartland started a necessary part of the conversation which far too many skeptics shirked away from. You’re right. They have no idea. And, thanks to many skeptics, most still don’t.

Eli Rabbett – Heartland does not say second hand smoke is not bad – they say it is not as bad as claimed. There is not enough specificity to render an informed opinion on their second hand smoke stance. I’m a non-smoker and I agree second hand smoke is not as bad as claimed. Missing from that statement, of course, is how bad I think it is, how bad I believe it is claimed to be, and how bad it actually is. Fact is I think it is pretty bad having grown up around it through my teens. And now I’m 67 and still don’t like being around it.

” A state is a democracy”? Is that what one can expect nowadays from a Harvard-trained anthropologist-biologist-sociologist? Evidently Greg Laden’s extensive “field work” didn’t encompass election rigging…

Hartland have taken the wrong tack, in emulating the slurs and threats of the Alarmists.

Alarmist slurs do not make Skeptics change their mind, and nor will Skeptic slurs make Alarmists change their mind. The only thing that will make the General Public think again, is pointing out the lies, disinformation and selective reporting from the Alarmist camp.

A much better poster campaign would have been to post a graph of:

Increasing Antarctic sea-ice, with a strap line saying “why did you not know this?”
Cooling Antarctic temperatures with a strap line saying “why did you not know this?”
Static world temperatures with a strap line saying “why did you not know this?”
Increasing polar bear numbers with a strap line saying “why did you not know this?”
Or in Britain, post one of the marvelous ‘scientific’ quotes about more droughts (we are having the wettest year ever).
Or in the USA, post the marvelous ‘scientific’ quote saying snow will be a thing of the past.

These are the posters and headlines that will make people think – not a picture of a Unibomber, who even I did not know as a Climate Alarmist, and whose crimes are a world away from the friendly TV weatherman who is saying the world will warm forever.

It is the weatherman and the TV news anchor that we need to counter, not the Unibomber !!

Pascal Lamy launches new LSE programme London School of Economics and Political Science: launch of LSE’s new Global Dimensions programme.
_________________________________

And just to let you know whose side Lamy is on, the LSE’s faculty of politics was being funded by slush-money from Saif al-Islam, the son of Colonel Gaddafi. This is the tune that these people are dancing to, and why they have a keen interest in destroying the West.

Saudi Arabia does much the same thing, funding fundamentalist Wahabi schools all over the West. The King Fahd School in London was teaching the British children there that Christians and Jews were apes and pigs:

To further correct the thread troll “trafamadore” – he’s obviously trying to use the name of the fictional planet from the Kurt Vonnegut novel “Slaughterhouse Five” which is properly spelled “tralfamadore”.

Robert says:
December 31, 2012 at 7:46 am
@ DaveyInUk says: December 31, 2012 at 3:35

When dogma is being seen as science, when people believe that they have absolute knowlegde with no test in reality and aspire to the knownledge of gods. Arrogance, ignorance, the push button order and the beliefs that the end justifies the means.

People should head the warning given to us by Jacob Bronowski.

==================================

Further to Bronowski’s narration (From Wiki):

“Cromwell’s rule, named by statistician Dennis Lindley,[1] states that one should avoid using prior probabilities of 0 or 1, except when applied to statements that are logically true or false. For instance, Lindley would allow us to say that ; Pr(2+2=4)=1

The reference is to Oliver Cromwell, who famously wrote to the synod of the Church of Scotland on August 5, 1650 saying;

“I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.”[2]

As Lindley puts it, one should “leave a little probability for the moon being made of green cheese; it can be as small as 1 in a million, but have it there since otherwise an army of astronauts returning with samples of the said cheese will leave you unmoved.”[3] If the prior probability one assigns to a hypothesis is 0 or 1, then, by Bayes’ theorem, the posterior probability (probability of the variable, given the evidence) is forced to be 0 or 1 as well; no evidence, no matter how strong, could have any influence.”

I admit I was critical of Heartland’s billboard for the same reasons artwest and others have expressed, but let’s consider what would have happened if Heartland hand put an inconvenient fact on the billboard instead. Nothing would have happened other than a few motorist seeing it. The controversy brought the issue to a larger audience. Perhaps a few people went to the Heartland website out of curiosity and then found something like the Spencer-Denning debate that planted the seed that perhaps this CAGW thing isn’t settled after all.

Eli, the 600k number for deaths due to 2nd hand smoke is so high, I have a lot of trouble believing it. Children dying from 2nd hand smoke simply does not happen without some sort of underlying major respiratory or other health issue. I do not and never have smoked and I hate 2nd hand smoke with a passion but that reported mortality number is so high it is simply unbelievable. As in, I don’t believe it…

I think Heartland now should retry, using Dr. Suzuki quotes ( Humans are maggots, and the science was in by 1988, Those leaders disagreeing with him on that, should be jailed)
Parncutt has retracted, so it’s a bit late to use him.

To the Moderators:
I have been a long term poster, do not spam, and post civilly. Yet it seems my posts are not being approved. My e-mail address is valid. If there is some line I have every crossed, please advise.

REPLY: I haven’t seen your comments, and there is nothing in the que, so I don’t know what to tell you. Sometimes the comment form simply fails. Try a machine restart. – Anthony

The second hand smoke argument makes us look silly so please stop it. From personal experience I know of a close relative that died of lung cancer who never smoked. I also know that her husband smoked like a chimney. I think a small women sitting in a small room with a man smoking continuously for a few decades is not a good or healthy.

I think to clarify the second hand smoke campaign (its off-topic nontheless) but for anyone who understands statistics just remember that correlation never proves causation and that it does not EVEN imply causation. To put it bluntly, anyone who says that second hand smoke caused “X deaths” is just misinformed and do not know what they are talking about. I challenge anyone who thinks otherwise to find me EVEN ONE death CAUSED by second hand smoke. I bet you can’t.

That is the problem with mis-using statistics which is also a common theme in global warming nuttiness.

Now back to on-topic discussions which do not include second hand smoke or other nonsense. Let’s discuss the billboard since that always seems to come up.

Lets look at the facts: The billboard was up less then one day. The number of people who actually saw it is so small that its just comical. The only reason people heard about it was news from elsewhere. If you have a problem with it, fine. But don’t pretend like it was a huge deal. It wasn’t. The only reason its a big deal is because warmist fools as I call them like to point out everything and anything that is negative about sceptics. Don’t let them do it! Keep them on the ropes.

Others claim that the billboard no longer allows sceptics to use the high road. So be it. The mud slingling will continue from the warmists as evidenced by loons such as Hansen, Laden et al. If they are going to sling mud and people are going to listen to them, we sceptics will only lose if all we do is go off on what common people call “boring facts.”

People want interesting discussions, not the same old boring “he said she said” nonsense. We are correct of course, but If you want to convince the population, you will have to sling mud. On the bright side, The link below shows that the warmists are already crazy so all we have to do is tell the truth. So yes, we can sling mud AND tell the truth. So do it. And stop thinking you are taking the high road by not pointing out facts. Are warmists like the unabomber? I would argue yes that most are. Perhaps they aren’t quite as insane, but tell me if you can tell the difference between the philosophy of the unabomber and Al Gore? I know I couldn’t….and if the philsophy is that similar, how do we know Al Gore wouldn’t do the same thing if he thought it would help his cause? Its an argument much like AGW which is the ironic part….prove me incorrect in other words. Prove that the general typical warmist wouldn’t commit crimes? I know they already have….so the only question is asking ourselves how far the greens will go in the end?

Not really. The only reason the Heartland billboard is brought [up] every time Gleick is mentioned is to take the spotlight off of Gleick’s disreputable con job. And yes, contributions to Heartland are tax deductible. I have made several — beginning after the billboard was put up.

As for the bunny’s defense of the Lancet second hand smoke study, that ‘study’ has been thoroughly debunked, just like many other Lancet studies were. To date, there has been no credible study of the effects of second hand smoke. DaveyinUK’s inductive example is typical of second hand smoke ‘reasoning’. I don’t like smoke, but our bodies were made to handle some smoke. Otherwise every cave or tent dweller would be dead in short order.

@D Böehm
I know it is anecdotal but try telling any member of my family. I also believe that sitting in a cave with smoke for several decades could potentially kill you. I would also say that trying to win a pointless argument is pointless. Second hand smoke is pointless. Leave it to others to fight for the cigarette companies. We need to focus on an issue that could kill millions in the west because it could destroy our economies.

Roger Knights says: “…. but it was a loser because it cost you the “high road” position in the debate in the eyes of others. …”

Huh? What exactly is this “high road” you speak of and who are the ‘others’? How high of a road were those slick eco-terrorism “No Pressure” ads done by 10:10? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE3g0i2rz4w ?? (Those had to have cost some $$$ to produce too because they appeared to be of very professional quality, costing a LOT more than a billboard. )

I think the message was clear enough, kowtow to our righteous cult, BE INCLUDED AS ONE OF US, believe our fundamental message like ‘everyone’ else or – you are as good as dead. It can’t get much lower than that…

To my mind, this thread demonstrates perfectly WUWT’s strengths and also its Achilles Heel. I am a UK-based, left leaning non-smoker. I don’t believe the science supports the second hand smoke argument and I was disgusted when the then UK government implemented a smoking ban despite the totally equivocal nature of the evidence. I would never have heard of the Heartland Institute if it hadn’t, when researching the issue, seen it cited as a nest of tobacco funded, rabid Neo-Con lunatics by the anti-smoking lobby. (Thanks to whoever posted the link to the suppressed WHO study by the way – I’d been looking for a copy for months).

Similarly, the climate debate seems to have fractured quite cleanly along right/left lines. I don’t believe the ‘warmist’ line and come here for reasoned, informed opinion. However…. at some point the comment threads always end up with someone throwing in a ‘warmunist, left-wing world domination, tree hugging nut job’ comment. It doesn’t take much thought to see that if you want to influence opinion this is not helpful. The data has no political affiliation and it makes no sense to alienate half the planet by making them think that they’re getting into bed with a bunch of ‘foaming at the mouth, ultra-conservative, NRA affiliated nut-jobs’ by questioning the AGW proponents’ line.
Even if you think the IPPC has a socialist agenda there’s no need to bring that into the argument, simply argue the science; if you win on that basis…. you win.

I believe Silver Ralph is right, a poster campaign advertising one inconvenient FACT is more likely to lead a non-committed person to examine the science than a thousand telling him/her that the warmists must be wrong because they’re all Fidel Castro in disguise.

I’m off to get drunk now – Happy Hogmanay and a guid new year to everyone!

“603 000 deaths were attributable to second-hand smoke in 2004, which was about 1·0% of worldwide mortality.”

So given ‘second hand smoke’ is such a massive killer that governments all over the world have used it as justification for banning smoking even in places where almost everyone would be smoking, presumably you can point to the massive reduction in deaths in those countries as a result of those new laws?

Or could it just be another example of using a dubious scientific claim to push a political agenda?

True dat. If secondhand smoke was really killing children and other innocent people, governments everywhere would have completely banned cigarettes.

But they haven’t. Governments are every bit as addicted to tobacco taxes as smokers are to cigarettes. But I doubt that even rapacious governments would deliberately allow children to be killed, when the solution is so simple.

Conclusion: governments know the second hand smoke canard is overblown hype. But they use it to extract ever more taxes from smokers. For the smokers’ own good, of course.

Horse says: December 31, 2012 at 11:30 am
===========================
Your point is well taken. I am conservative, yet I deplore the casting of science issues into political terms as some do here at WUWT. This is unfortunate, I think, but it is the consequence of the issues of science being precipitated into the public arena. There is no question that this was deliberate and that it was not done by skeptics, whose posture is essentially defensive.
mpainter

Horse says: December 31, 2012 at 11:30 am
The data has no political affiliation and it makes no sense to alienate half the planet by making them think that they’re getting into bed with a bunch of ‘foaming at the mouth, ultra-conservative, NRA affiliated nut-jobs’ by questioning the AGW proponents’ line.
______________________________________

You are both right, and wrong.

In the UK:
The Warmists are represented by: The Independent, The Grauniad, and the BBC.
Those on the fence include: The Times.
Those who regularly oppose the Warmists are: The Daily Mail and The Torygraph (sorry, The Telegraph).

See a trend here?

Unfortunately, the climate is now a political issue, and the reason is not hard to fathom. If you indulge me with a generalization:

The left-leaning fraternity are traditionally idealists, thinking that people and the world are wonderful, and wouldn’t it be nice if we could all live together and only work on Thursday afternoons (they normally work in government agencies and suck the government teat, so money grows on trees).**

The right-leaning fraternity are often businessmen and independent tradesmen or even those who work piece-time, and know the value of hard work; and also know that not everyone is nice or has the same social or cultural values.

Thus environmental issues and values were a natural fit with the Liberal Left, much more so than it was with the Rationalist Right. There are exceptions, of course, like the husky-hugging David Cameron, but he is an exception in the Tory Party. Hence, the Climate is now a political issue, and is being fought along party lines.

.

** Remember the old joke: The best political system in the world is Liberal-Socialism – until they run out of other people’s money….

Actually, ‘global warming’ has been a political issue at least since Margaret Thatcher realised she could use it as another justification for closing down coal mines. The left at the time opposed it and pointed out what nonsense it was, until they realised they could use it to control industry and raise taxes.

The funny part is that many people I know in the British left complain about Thatcher closing coal mines while simultaneously demanding that the country reduce CO2 emissions to stop ‘climate change’.

VANNEVAR BUSH
By promoting a closer relationship between government, science, and industry, Bush helped increase the military-industrial complex significantly. Ironically, he was never comfortable with big government during the post-WWII years or with the increased military influence over science. But by then the changes he had fostered had eclipsed his power to control them.

Eisenhower
“Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.”

MarkG says: December 31, 2012 at 2:15 pm
====================================
Thatcher wished to close the mines which were uneconomic. This led to the famous confrontation betwen Arthur Scargill and the government. Scargill ordered the miners out on strike without a vote of union members. The strike received very little support elsewhere and collapsed after a few months.

Wikipedia on Scargill:

Scargill has become more politically outspoken since stepping down from the NUM presidency, he is a Communist sympathiser[12] and has gone on record as a supporter of Joseph Stalin, saying that the “ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin” explain the “real world”.[13] Scargill had long criticised Poland’s Solidarity trade union movement for its attacks upon the communist system in Poland, which Scargill saw as deformed but reformable.

I don’t know why you guys haven’t learned from the AGW debate that what you are spouting, with regard to the “billboard” is your opinion and not a fact. You may have thought it was a bad idea and you are entitled to that. Some of us thought it was brilliant and deposited money in Heartland’s account to show our support. Just because you have a perspective doesn’t make it so. Get over yourselves.

i have no knowledge about this — but Greg Laden probably calls himself a strong femininst becasue he lets his wife support him. i would love to see their tax returns. People like Laden always adopt stances that are extremely self-serving.

I like your posts. Guess if I were male I’d join the queue too! :) “Follow The Money” is indeed crucial to understanding the underlying issues, as I have learned, mainly here.

Now I’d like to recommend you watch the video “Thrive” if you have not already done so. It is not perfect, and there are two characters there whom I would not trust. But its great strengths are that* it explains “follow the money” with beautiful clarity
* it explains the serious cover-up that exists concerning the real energy alternatives (over-unity motors, LENR with or without Rossi, etc)
* it recognizes the fraudulent nature of current official Climate Science and the IPCC – with reasons behind this fraud which Monckton would recognize very well, and probably you too.

Its stance in general will appeal to many tenderhearted sensitive greens whom we so often find siding with the warmists. So it is potentially a bridge-builder, and an exit route for cornered rats despite my above-stated reservation.

It would be good to have a post at WUWT / other skeptics blogs / on this video. I reckon it is an important piece of work.

Inciting a mob is and always has been a crime. It is important we all remember that we would have never, under any circumstances, put up with government employees telling us to shut up, if we weren’t all huddling together temporarily as we expunged and evaluated effective cultural threat from Al Qaeda et al.

Al Gore ran a terrorist threat war inside the American cultural combined agreement to huddle down and not break ranks with our government no matter what.

He illegally swayed markets and does so today threatening people with destruction of property and even human life if the people didn’t go ahead and ignore the election,

and install the policies he wants, and buy the products he sells; because as he put it,

He as an Occidental Oil Baron was vested in the world’s third largest oil company but half it’s holdings were in alternative energy so, his Oil was actually Patriotic OIl and Other Oil Baron (Bush Oil) Oil, was actually Terrorist Oil.
In roughly as many words, that’s what he said, and he further informed the world that in this case, using his place amid the presidency – Vice Presidency is a place amid presidential politics:
Oh yes, it is –
was fighting terrorism.
Terrorism George Bush’s oil paid.
Al Gore Occidental Oil Baron: patriot
George Bush, ‘Regular Old’ Oil Baron, terrorist.

It’s very important we remember how this got this way.

It was a vicious, criminal, publicity stunt by Al Gore, Occidental Oil Baron, getting even with George Bush, Regular Old Oil Baron

who ‘robbed’ him of ‘his turn.’ This was all basically a weather scam to stop cutting of funds during the Clinton years and as Hansen got dug in he kept up his ‘Tropopause Asploding’ malarkey.

Hansen was running a criminal, vicious (vicious means associated with vice, in case you don’t know reader and in this case of course the vice is a lunging lust for power, more publicity, and money)
publicity stunt to justify his Asploding Tropopause crank science to stop funds cutting as the Cold War bureaucracy was pared back to normal need levels,

When Al Gore uncovered it knowing the wheels of law enforcement could be held off a long time, he ran his own criminal scam to punish his employees – he views the citizens as his helpers – in a ‘Cause’ – for him losing the election. His excuse at judgement day will be to shake his head and say, ‘people are sheep. I gave them a cleaner environment. They wanted one. It came at cost of taxing the air a woman’s child breathes out, but who’s countin’? They can peel the law back till it fits.’

It’s another in a long line of historical instances of a man just drizzling his own musky ‘I Own You’ marker all over the heads of anyone associated with him for not making him happy.

He’s peeing on he heads of his constituents as well as his political enemies knowing he’s gotten away with the biggest heist in history. At the cost of the prestige of all mankind in trying to look out for itself. But Al doesn’t care, because he has the venerated position of FDR who was the great governmentalist of HIS time. He’s closing himself off from publicity and doling out the millions upon millions in manipu-money he functionally printed for himself as a going away present for losing the presidency.

Fred Singer is well known for his skeptical position on second hand smoke (ETS). He doubts the claims routinely made by the rabid anti-tobacco-ists who often turn out to be the same people as the climate alarmists. So when you bring up his name about the CAGW fraud they almost always will pile on that those who deny CAGW are believing people like Singer who also deny the association of ETS to lung cancer. (see my NIH.GOV link above)

In both of those arenas we have hard data on our side to suggest we are correct while the fraudsters have nothing but manufactured/purchased opinions and models.

I’m proudly comfortable be associated with someone like Fred Singer because he strives to base his opinions on scientific facts. In stark contrast however, I am about as comfortable being associated with anyone who claims to have ‘harnessed’ perpetual motion as I am being associated with 911 ‘truthers’ because none of them have ever demonstrated their machinery to work in a verifiable scientific setting, (closed box). Just like CAGW hoaxsters, they supply their own manufactured ‘proof’ and purchased testimonials because their only real intent is to swindle people.

Don’t be fooled, no one has ever demonstrated that they know how to violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics within the confines of the limited universe in which we live.

Well, I’m hoping RGB will overview the violations of the laws of physics such devices would have to accomplish in order to work as claimed. I’ll just bring up a more economic objection. If there were a device that I could run my house off of indefinitely then that product would be a competitive advantage for the first company to patent and bring to market. So, besides the perpetual motion problems, I would have to believe that several companies would sacrifice a competitive advantage for sales in order to preserve an industry. I don’t find that likely at all. For example the widely rumored carburetor that allows pretty much any car to get 70-100 MPG, why wouldn’t Ford (or any other car manufacturer) take advantage of such a technology? To preserve Exxon’s sales? Why would Ford care about Exxon?

The video also claims that it is almost a certainty that there’s other intelligent life in the universe (or Universe). While I sincerely hope that we aren’t the hope of the universe it is possible that we are. Consider that there is an infinite number of whole numbers, yet only one 42. Taking 42 as representing Earth and all the variables that went into producing intelligent life, nobody knows if 41 or 43 would be close enough or not. My personal opinion is that we’ll find microbial life relatively common, multicellular life less common, but intelligent life exceedingly rare in the Universe; there’s just so many variables that have to align for intelligence to evolve.

While I’m on the subject of sets that include infinity (for RGB) there’s an infinite number of whole numbers and an infinite number of real numbers between each whole number such that something larger is contained within something smaller. (eh?)

Heartland’s ad required me to play defense when the shoe should have been on the other foot.
========

Silver Ralph says:
December 31, 2012 at 8:38 am

Heartland have taken the wrong tack, in emulating the slurs and threats of the Alarmists.

In the wake of the Gleick hacking and smearing, Heartland was able to position itself as an injured innocent. It could play the victim card, which provides “one up” status. It threw that PR advantage away by its billboard ad. The court of public opinion automatically marginalizes any proponent who analogizes the opposition to terrorists and murderers. It’s a violation of Godwin’s Rule, and a sure loser. Now Heartland has, in the minds of the majority, lost the ability to complain about being the victim of out-of-bounds behavior, because Heartland is viewed as an out-of-bounds player itself. The ad has enabled Heartland’s enemies to effectively portray it as an extremist and dirty fighter.

This foot-shooting PR-effect is easier to see when warmists commit the same sort of mistake of going too far and getting too vitriolic, as in the No Pressure TV ad campaign. Comments here in the wake of such over-egged alarmist statements and accusations (e.g., “death trains”–a borderline Godwinism) often point out how self-defeating such tactics are, and how we ought to welcome them as undermining their credibility and likeability.

John West says:
December 31, 2012 at 9:04 am

I admit I was critical of Heartland’s billboard for the same reasons artwest and others have expressed, but let’s consider what would have happened if Heartland hand put an inconvenient fact on the billboard instead. Nothing would have happened other than a few motorist seeing it. The controversy brought the issue to a larger audience. Perhaps a few people went to the Heartland website out of curiosity and then found something like the Spencer-Denning debate that planted the seed that perhaps this CAGW thing isn’t settled after all

“Perhaps a few people . . . ” Great. That’s outweighed 10,000 to 1 by the loss of Heartland’s victim card in the court of public opinion and in the MSM-mediated public conversation.

Mike M says:
December 31, 2012 at 11:18 am

Roger Knights says: “…. but it was a loser because it cost you the “high road” position in the debate in the eyes of others. …”

Huh? What exactly is this “high road” you speak of and who are the ‘others’? How high of a road were those slick eco-terrorism “No Pressure” ads done by 10:10?

Those ads do not represent the tactics of mainstream warmism–not remotely. If one allows oneself to be drawn into matching low blows with low blows, one may have some temporary satisfaction, but the general public will shrink from you for not taking the high road. Gandhi recognized that positioning his movement on the high road was essential, despite temptations to adopt eye-for-an-eye tactics, and he was right.

Merovign says:
December 31, 2012 at 12:38 pm
The Warmists are *practically* allowed to smear, lie, commit fraud, and insult.

You have disallowed yourselves the ability to as much as *point that out* in public – as opposed to on friendly blogs.

No, I said that Marc Morano could do so safely–by which I implied in public on TV—or on a billboard, come to think of it. By implication, so could any of half a dozen other contrarian organizations. (I’d suggest the poster child for warmism should be Mugabe and Chavez, though; or maybe Patchy dressed in a red and black Satan-suit, holding a pitchfork and saying, “Buy my pardons or things will get warmer for you, Ha-ha-ha,”– he already has the Mephilostopholean (sp?) beard. Such an ad would have the charm of lightheartedness, which is more attractive than vitriol.)

Robert in Calgary says:
December 31, 2012 at 6:07 pm
at 8:00 am – thisisnotgoodtogo said:

I thought the billboard was fantastic. The Gleick’s, Laden’s et al, have a long, long list of vile crimes, frauds, lies, statements, etc.

It’s a mistake to preach to the choir if the audience you want to influence is an “unchurched” majority that is unaware of the context and that will see your defense as an unprovoked attack.

Roger, nicely explained.
I had to defend because a family member who can appreciate, say a McIntyre demolition, and will consider collusion between interested parties as a possibility, and admit that a Pachauri is…well, you know – that family member who is not terribly interested in the whole debate, knew about the ad but not about Gleick’s forgery.
The ad tipped the scales heavily against Heartland and skeptics, and made the forgery an easy sell to the public.

It allowed the public to disbelieve Heartland on the forgery issue. Complete wipeout unless Gleick was carefully explained.

Roger Knights says:““Perhaps a few people . . . ” Great. That’s outweighed 10,000 to 1 by the loss of Heartland’s victim card in the court of public opinion and in the MSM-mediated public conversation.”

Do you have any evidence to support 10,000 to 1 or is it really just perhaps 10,000 to 1? Look, the MSM already had plenty of ways to paint Heartland in a bad light from supporting big tobacco to funded by big oil. It doesn’t matter whether any of that is true or not, the MSM controls the headline message which is all most people notice. There was no way they were going to allow the Gleick incident to put Heartland in a favorable light in the headlines. No matter what is buried on the continued on page of an article the headline “Evil Conservative Think Tank Frustrates Angelic Scientist into Heroic Action for the Earth’s Future” tells most people all they think they need to know. The way we win over people is for people to look for information outside of the MSM. That is how most of us became skeptics. However is best to induce enough curiosity to go seek additional information is what I’m in favor of. Somehow I doubt it’s the same for everyone, some may respond to the high road approach, others may respond to the low road approach.

We at Heartland appreciate all the interest in this post, as well as the support we’ve received from Anthony and many commenters on this thread. That means more than most of you know. We also realize the obvious: There are differing opinions on the wisdom of running that billboard.

Heartland’s president, Joe Bast, speaks for himself with this post. He offers an example of the exhausting game of “whack-a-mole” that Heartland faces every day. We are grateful that so many help us publicly defend the truth and sound science on the environment.

Here I speak for myself:

I tend to agree with John West and others who make the general point that the MSM has never allowed the calm and realist side to have the “high ground” in the climate debate. That is by design. As noted by “thisisnotgoodtogo,” his/her family member had never heard about Gleick’s disgrace and crime against Heartland, but heard about the billboard. One should look at that fact in full.

The family member, who apparently relies on MSM and leftist bloggers, did not hear about a MAJOR STORY OF SIGNIFICANCE that embarrasses and discredits a prominent critic of Heartland. Not a word. But the family member somehow got wind of a minor kerfuffle — a “controversial” digital billboard that ran for one day — which was used as merely the most convenient club (of many) that the MSM and the left use to hammer Heartland, an organization that dares to question the catastrophic AGW hypothesis. I think a not-too-generous interpretation of this dynamic is that the billboard coverage gave thisisnotgoodtogo a window to bring up Gleick’s crimes to a family member who was ignorant of them.

Heartland’s billboard is now part of the debate, and there is a “for better” and a “for worse” aspect to that fact. But speaking from a perspective on the front lines of these debates, I have to say that the notion the skeptic side as a whole (let alone Heartland) is gravely harmed by the billboard is folly. Joe offered a seven-point rebuttal to one blogger — of which the billboard rebuttal was but one point. And that was hardly exhaustive of the lies Heartland (and many skeptics) have to rebut. It was merely the flavor of that day.

BOTTOM LINE: I don’t believe any other organization has done more than The Heartland Institute to collect and promote the data that must inform the public policy debate about what to do (if anything) about what is happening to the planet when it comes to warming and cooling. (See presentations of Heartland’s Eight International Conferences on Climate Change here: http://climateconferences.heartland.org/)

Continuing to let the unprincipled, unscientific opponents of an honest exploration of that data define the terms of the debate is to surrender. As Joe Bast pointed out in this thread, Heartland is not about to surrender — and, in fact, is stronger and more resolute than ever.

Again, all who work for and support Heartland are grateful for the encouragement (and criticism) we get from the folks we meet on these threads.

I completely support Heartland, including the Kazynski billboard. And I support Heartland with regular donations. I began contributing to Heartland after the Kazynski billboard was produced.

Most folks raise the billboard issue to deflect from Gleick’s shenanigans. But there is no comparison. Peter Gleick is a devious rat, while Heartland tells the truth: Kazynski was a typical enviro-loon — as are his apologists. War is Peace, Ignorance is Strength, Heartland is Bad, etc.

Rocky Road;
Yeah, I remember being afforded a glimpse of a room containing a few of the latest Bernoulli drives, about 4′ high and 2′ diameter, each holding an unheard of 10 MB, on several platters. For about $100K each, back when $1000 was a lot of money. They were owned by a bank, of course.

Joe Bast;
I disagree with all the “billboard” slammers. The motivation, content, and effect were all excellent.

Jim, the family member does not “do” computer, so it was only cable TV input.
As I said, I was able to overcome the difficulty posed. However, if you had compared Ted’s belief to Al Gore’s or David Suzuki’s, It would have been so much better than to point at the viewer of the ad.

“However, if you had compared Ted’s belief to Al Gore’s or David Suzuki’s, It would have been so much better than to point at the viewer of the ad.”

If the billboard did that, you would not have heard about it. Have you taken the test that asks you to pick either Ted Kazynski or Al Gore as the author of several sentences and paragraphs. The sentiments and writing style are so similar, it is almost impossible to pick the correct author most of the time. I know many in the skeptical community that have taken the test, but I don’t know anyone outside the community that has even heard about it. It gets no coverage.

The Heartland billboard hit a nerve with the MSM and the public. Consequently, there are more people paying attention and some of them are discerning the truth.

… I’m proudly comfortable be associated with someone like Fred Singer because he strives to base his opinions on scientific facts.

In stark contrast however, I am about as comfortable being associated with anyone who claims to have ‘harnessed’ perpetual motion as I am being associated with 911 ‘truthers’ because none of them have ever demonstrated their machinery to work in a verifiable scientific setting, (closed box). Just like CAGW hoaxsters, they supply their own manufactured ‘proof’ and purchased testimonials because their only real intent is to swindle people.

Don’t be fooled, no one has ever demonstrated that they know how to violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics within the confines of the limited universe in which we live.

Mike, thanks for that reality check. I forgot to append evidence to my WUWT post – which, in order to uphold “nullius in verba”, I generally try to do. You inspired me as to which evidence to use, thanks. Please get back to me on my website email address, WHEN you have studied the evidence presented here. It is precisely because you cannot see this close, precise, free-of-theory examination of evidence anywhere else, that this lady has spoken up. She is a professor of mechanical engineering. Here it is.

Some people are going to be challenged to revise, not the Second Law per se, just their interpretations of it. There’s lots of evidence to be found, in between the fraudsters and doubters and showmen and suppressors. You just need to look carefully and without preconceptions, as per real Scientific Method.

“thisisnotgoodtogosaid
‘However, if you had compared Ted’s belief to Al Gore’s or David Suzuki’s, It would have been so much better than to point at the viewer of the ad.’

If the billboard did that, you would not have heard about it. Have you taken the test that asks you to pick either Ted Kazynski or Al Gore as the author of several sentences and paragraphs. The sentiments and writing style are so similar, it is almost impossible to pick the correct author most of the time. I know many in the skeptical community that have taken the test, but I don’t know anyone outside the community that has even heard about it. It gets no coverage.

The Heartland billboard hit a nerve with the MSM and the public. Consequently, there are more people paying attention and some of them are discerning the truth.”

It could be said that more are tending to accept the skeptical side, but “more compared to what” is important too.

If it’s more than before, fine.
If it’s not more than turn the other way, not so fine.

Here’s a hypothetical ad that would be far more outrageous, but that has some parallels to the Unabomber ad. I.e., it would have sacrificed the high road in exchange for some short-term benefits–and that the sacrifice wouldn’t be worth it in the long run:

That would be universally regarded as “going too far” and hitting below the belt. It would mean that the media would treat other emanations from such an organization (such as its conferences and publications) as unworthy of attention (or not “fit to print”).

The Unabomber ad has had and will have something of the same effect–although that’s not fair. But it would have been wise to recognize that it would be used as an excuse by an unfair media to (further) marginalize Heartland.